Generally, a refrigerator is provided with a plurality of storage rooms such as a freezer room for storing frozen food or beverage, a cold storage room for storing food or beverage at a low temperature and the like.
The storage room is configured to have an opening at its one side to enable a user to put food in the storage room or to take out the food put therein. The opening is generally closed by a door rotatably mounted to the refrigerator body.
The door and the storage room are formed of a metal or resin based material in general. It can be difficult to provide airtightness between the door and the opening of the storage room, depending on the characteristics of the door and the storage room.
A microscopic gap may exist between the door and the opening, so that cold air within the storage room leaks out of the refrigerator.
To prevent such cold air leakage, a refrigerator according to the related art has a sealing member formed of an elastic material provided at a contact area between the door and the opening, to block a gap between the door and the opening.
The sealing part is provided at a contact area between the door and the opening of the storage room, and more particularly, to an inner edge of the door to have a prescribed thickness. The sealing part is generally formed of a rubber based elastic material to adhere closely to the inner edge of the door and an outer boundary of the opening.
If the opening of the storage room is closed, the sealing part provided to the inner edge of the door comes into contact with the outer boundary of the opening to adhere closely thereto. So, the sealing part contacts with the outer boundary of the opening of the storage room to seal the door and the opening.
Yet, even if the opening is sealed using the sealing part, the contact area between the sealing part and the outer boundary of the opening can fail to be completely airtight, with but a microscopic gap being generated at the contact area, so that a cold air leaks from the storage room.
To solve this problem, an auxiliary member such as a magnet or similar, for enhancing an adherence between the sealing part and the opening has been developed to enable the sealing part and the outer boundary of the opening to adhere more closely to each other. Yet, the complete airtightness of the opening can still be difficult to achieve due to an aging of the sealing part, deformation of the rubber-based sealing part due to adherence between the door and the opening, and the like.
Moreover, if the sealing part is cooled down by the cold air of the storage room, water drops may form on an outer surface of the sealing part to the dissatisfaction of a consumer.